Fish Crash No Surprise

by
5m Editor

6 November 2006, at 12:00am

CANADA - It comes as no surprise to those of us who follow these things that a new study under the leadership of Boris Worm of Dalhousie, published in the journal Science, predicts the collapse of the world's fish stocks by 2048.

As far back as 1998, UBC's Dr. Dan Pauly had made similar predictions. In last February's Science it was reported that 90 per cent of the oceans' large predators are gone. We are the problem and we must be the solution. For calamitous though these findings are, there's hope if we don't lose sight of our objective, work like hell and make sacrifices.

This is particularly true for B.C., since we are one of the few faint hopes for recovery and maintenance of fish stocks. How ironic it is that fish farms in the Broughton Archipelago make this point; for the one year a migration path was free of fish farms, there were excellent returns.

Our sins go back a long way. As kids we were told to "throw the little ones back" and indeed that philosophy is still the law. Think about that. The big fish you catch has survived all manner of problems and is now big enough to spawn. Kill that fish and you kill a solution to the diminished fish problem.

Throwing the little fish back has two main problems. Unlike his bigger sibling, it probably won't survive the return, usually bleeding, to the ocean, and it must now set out on its journey full of the dangers that its big brother or sister has survived.